Have You Any Dreams You'd Like to Sell?
by smellslikecorruption
Summary: What didn't kill me, never made stronger at all.


**Title:** Have You Any Dreams You'd Like to Sell?

**Characters/Pairings**: Veronica, mentions of assorted cast

**Length**: 660 words

**Timeline:** Summer after S3

**Summary:** What didn't kill me, never made me stronger at all

**AN:** From the prompt, _what didn't kill me, never made me stronger at all; Veronica-gen._

x

During the day, Veronica gets coffee, and makes copies, and talks to her fellow interns about how much they want to be in the FBI (but she doesn't talk to anyone for long, because, someday, all the crime nuts that surround her are going to start connecting dots, and it's never a long line to Neptune). Her days are busy, and packed, and routine. But it's not enough to keep the nightmares away. Not anymore. Not like the past summers, when she's had other things and other people to distract her from her memories.

So, at night, she dreams. Horrible dreams, fever dreams, like the ones she used to get, back in high school. The ones with Lilly and her head wound, or the kids on the bus. Vivid, surround sound dreams and, somehow, now they're worse. Now, it's not just whatever case she's trying to solve, because now there is no case. Now, the dreams are everything she's seen in the past few years, all cut together and playing on a loop night after night.

She dreams about Aaron in a hundred different ways. The memories of his face on the tapes, and his face in her review mirror, and his face when he locked her in a freezer and set it on fire. Those memories swirl together with things she's never seen but has imagined; she sees him killing Lilly, and she sees him hitting Logan, and she sees him with a bullet in his skull.

She dreams about Lilly, broken and bleeding again, instead of peaceful.

She dreams about Weevil, in prison.

She dreams about her father, barely moving in a hospital bed after he saved her from the flames. She dreams about the explosion that should have killed him, and she dreams that it did. She dreams that he died out in the desert. She dreams that he isn't her father, that the test came back different. She dreams about the hell she put him through during the election. She dreams that he can't stand to lose and sacrifices her instead. Sometimes, she dreams that he's the one that left and not her mother.

She dreams about her mother, and her college money, and a stolen check.

She dreams about Cassidy. Sometimes he is small and alone and abused, but usually she dreams about the night she can't remember, and the night she can't forget, and sometimes he still jumps, but sometimes she shoots him instead. And sometimes he shoots Logan. And sometimes he pushes her off the building.

She dreams about Mac, shivering in a hotel room. And Dick having to ID his little brother from a bloody lump on the sidewalk.

She dreams about running, and drugs, and hiding in a closet full of hair. She dreams that Mercer catches her. She dreams she's in Parker's room, and can only stand still and watch while Mercer violates her body and shaves her head.

She dreams about Logan. Bleeding from his father's hand, or from the thousands of fights he picks. Sometimes, she still dreams about him with Madison, but that one comes less and less now. Usually, she sees him finding new ways to get killed, most often by the silenced guns of the Russian mob. Or he goes off the bridge, like his mother, or has a bullet in his brain like his father. The really bad ones are when he dies from trying to help her. The worst ones are the ones where he never tries at all.

She dreams about things that haven't happened. Wallace never coming back from Africa, either because he likes it there, or because he dies. Duncan and his daughter getting hurt. Her mother dying in a hospital somewhere from alcohol poisoning.

At night she dreams, and she never tells anyone, or calls anyone, or asks for help, because she is Veronica Mars and whatever doesn't kill her can only ever make her stronger.

She wakes up screaming.


End file.
